IRAN: Warming up to once-despised Jimmy Carter

The Iranian government has officially and regularly decried former President Jimmy Carter since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. 

But it looks like some within official Iranian circles are willing to let bygones be bygones, especially now that Carter has defied the Bush administration by meeting with the Palestinian militant group and Iranian ally, Hamas.

Iran's animosity toward Carter stretches back decades. He was, after all, the U.S. commander in chief who toasted deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi months before a popular 1978 uprising against his rule, briefly offered the monarch sanctuary in America and dispatched an ill-fated rescue team to free American diplomats and embassy employees being held hostage in Iran.

But politics makes for strange bedfellows.

ISRAEL: A day of protests

Extra police deployed throughout Israel and the West Bank Sunday as Palestinians marked the annual protest known as Land Day.

Thousands of demonstrators turned out in several cities to decry what they say is the ongoing Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land and homes.

In the northern Arab town of Sakhnin a vigil marked the first Land Day in 1976 when Israeli police killed six protesters.

A 2,000-strong march took place Saturday in Jaffa — a coastal Arab city that has become a focal point for tense land disputes. Rights groups there are protesting eviction and demolition orders on hundreds of homes on the grounds of construction violations.

Dov Khenin, a leftist Israeli Knesset member, said the event serves as an annual reminder of the plight of Palestinian communities deep inside Israel.

"Land Day is more relevant than ever,” he said.  “The entire Israeli public should assist the Arab community in their struggle for equality in their homeland."

Israeli troops used tear gas to disperse a protest near Nablus, but there were no serious injuries reported.

— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

Photo: Palestinian children stage a sit-in to mark "Land Day" at the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al-Hilweh near the southern Lebanese coastal city of Sidon, on Monday. Land Day commemorates the killing of six Israeli-Arabs during a 1976 protest against Israeli land confiscations. Credit: MAHMOUD ZAYAT/AFP/Getty Images

MIDDLE EAST: Cheney makes Iran bomb allegation

Certainly high oil prices, the state of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arab-Israeli conflict were high on the agenda of Vice President Dick Cheney's recent tour of the Middle East. But the subject of Iran was never far from the surface of the trip, which is now wrapping up.

Cheney alleged in an interview Monday that Iran was trying to develop weapons-grade uranium, even though international inspectors have never found such evidence.

According to a White House transcript of an interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz, Cheney said:

Obviously, they're also heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment, the enrichment of uranium to weapons grade levels.

Iran is currently enriching uranium at its plant in Natanz in central Iran. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched or concentrated at 80% or 90%. According to the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report, Iran currently enriches uranium at concentrations of less than 3.8%, which is the amount necessary for creating fuel for a reactor. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful energy production, but the U.S. and other Western countries have cast suspicion.

ISRAEL: Easter in the Holy Land

Thousands of religious pilgrims flood into Jerusalem every Easter weekend. This year, one of the more low-key worshippers was Vice-President Dick Cheney, who arrived in Jerusalem Saturday for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

ISRAEL: McCain supports victims of Gaza shelling

Like a candidate canvassing the neighborhood, Sen. John McCain paid a call on the Amar family Wednesday in their yellow stone house on Sinai Street.

"He came in, shook hands, talked at eye level and was not condescending," Aliza Amar said. "He walked in with simplicity, as if he lives around here."

He doesn't. The all-but-certain Republican nominee for the White House stopped in Israel during a seven-day overseas trip to affirm his friendship with the Jewish state and his solidarity with its most besieged citizens...

...The newspaper Haaretz periodically ranks the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being "best for Israel." The latest rating by its panel of eight experts gave McCain 7.75 points, Clinton 7.5 and Obama 5.12.

"As far as Israel is concerned, and in the view of the candidates' current positions, no one is better than McCain," Haaretz columnist Amir Oren wrote this week...

Click here to read more.

— Richard Boudreaux in Sderot, Israel

Photo: John McCain (right) and Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak visit the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Wednesday. McCain is in the region as part of congressional delegation. Credit: Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

ISRAEL: Hamas now favorite of Palestinians

During three months of foundering peace talks overshadowed by violence, the U.S.-backed Palestinian leadership in the West Bank has lost popular support and is now viewed as less legitimate than the Islamic government of rival group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. That's according to a poll released Monday.

The survey is the latest sign that the Bush administration's effort to shore up secular Palestinian leaders and isolate Hamas is failing. That effort, part of a strategy to stabilize the Middle East through an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, includes diplomatic support and promises of economic aid to the West Bank.

Polling data collected in the West Bank and Gaza this month show that Hamas, which rejects peace talks and continues to fight Israel, has gained sharply in popularity since December, reversing a two-year decline.

To read more, click here.

— Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem

Photo: Palestinian children are seen during a Hamas rally in the Jebaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip. Credit: ALI ALI/EPA

ISRAEL: Facebook face-off

As fellow blogger Borzou Daragahi has already noted, Facebook is huge in Lebanon. The social networking site has already become a major force in Lebanese politics and society.

Now Facebook has been drawn into the black hole-like gravitational pull of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinian members in the West Bank were recently outraged to discover their hometown in their Facebook biographies had been changed from Palestine to Israel. After a brief outcry, the change was reversed. But now Israeli residents in settlements throughout the West Bank are outraged that THEIR hometown has been changed from Israel to Palestine.

The conflict spills over into Facebook’s groups section as well. The “Palestine is a country!” group has over 1,900 members while “It’s not ‘Palestine’ It’s ‘Israel!” has more than 13,000.

Controversy sprung up again last week when a Facebook group honoring Alaa Abu Dheim, the Palestinian gunman who killed eight religious students in Jerusalem on March  6. That group currently has 79 members, while a pair of groups urging that the Abu Dheim group be deleted have 272.

— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

Image: Palestinians don't have a state, but they do have a Facebook page, with nearly 35,000 members.

ISRAEL: A solution not on the table

The mood was ugly outside the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem Thursday night. Inside the seminary lay the bodies of eight students, along with the body of the Palestinian gunman who killed them.

Outside, a right-wing activist complained to me that the U.S. was preventing Israel from simply killing or exiling all the Palestinians. Even the cooler heads in the crowd said there was no hope ever for a negotiated peace and that the government should end all negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But one young man, whose friend had escaped the attack by diving under a parked car, proposed a solution so startling that I had to track him down later and confirm that I heard him right.

MIDDLE EAST: Boycott of Paris book fair over Israel

A decision to make Israel the guest of honor at the upcoming Paris book fair has angered Muslim countries around the world. On Saturday, Iranian authorities announced that they would boycott the five-day book fair.

Iran wasn't the first country to opt out of the fair. It may not be the last.

WEST BANK: Decking the walls in Bethlehem

The little town of Bethlehem has become a giant art project this Christmas season, with Israel’s separation barrier serving as a canvas — and target.

More than a dozen foreign artists have converged on the traditional birthplace of Jesus to splash politically tinged images and messages on various bare walls around town. It’s all part of a happening called Santa’s Ghetto, a yearly forum for the works of street and graffiti artists that is normally staged in London. This time, the company organizing the event picked Bethlehem in order to highlight the barrier, which encircles the town in the form of a nearly 30-foot concrete wall. Organizers say they are politically unaffiliated and don’t speak for the artists.

The event, running until Christmas Eve, revolves around a silent auction of the works of two dozen U.S. and European artists at an improvised gallery on Manger Square, near the spot where the Bible says Jesus was born. Some of the featured artists, including the British graffiti artist known as Banksy, traveled to the Holy Land to spray, daub, stencil and glue new works all over Bethlehem. Proceeds are to benefit a children’s charity, as yet undetermined.

The burst of street art has created a buzz in the normally forlorn West Bank town, which suffered a drop in tourism after violence broke out in 2000 and has yet to recover. Municipal leaders also blame the barrier, which Israel says is needed to block suicide bombers, for the sagging economy. These days, visitors are coming to hunt for the Banksy images, including that of a girl frisking an Israeli soldier and of a flak-jacket-wearing dove in flight. Enterprising taxi drivers are reportedly charging $100 for a tour of the wall art.

On a recent day, the New York street artist known as Swoon braved a sharp winter wind while pasting colorful cloth pockets onto the Palestinian side of the concrete barrier. She was tucking slips of paper with hand-lettered messages into each. Her helper offered us one, a quotation ascribed to Martin Luther King Jr. It read: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” We said thanks, and zoomed off in search of more wall art.

— Ken Ellingwood in Bethlehem
   

WEST BANK: Ramallah's finest

Along with throngs of pre-holiday shoppers in downtown Ramallah is a new sight: the first female police officers in the West Bank.

The freshly minted cops, wearing navy pants, light blue shirts, and, in some case, Muslim headscarves under their police caps, are directing traffic in Ramallah’s central shopping district after completing their academy training.

On a recent day, about 10 of the rookie officers were trying to untangle the knot of cars and pedestrians around Manara Square, a rotary that is especially clogged with shoppers ahead of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, starting Wednesday, and Christmas. Alongside male counterparts, the female officers sought to keep cars moving and to persuade pedestrians to use the official crosswalks.

Policing is a new role for Palestinian women, who tend to enjoy more rights in the workplace and public life than those in many Arab societies. Palestinian women hold public office and run businesses though the overall society remains traditional in many respects.

One of the new officers said she enjoys the work, even though “people do not seem to listen to orders from the women in blue.” In fact, at Manara Square, it often seemed as if the women would not have been heeded if not for the accompanying male officers. The women are starting with traffic duty, but plans also call for them to help during arrest raids in cases where women are inside the homes in question.

The female officer, who didn’t want to give her name, said people will get used to taking orders from women cops. Some pedestrians seemed to like the idea of female cops. Hasan Abdul Salam, 38, an employee at the social-affairs ministry, said he was on board. “I think it is a healthy and civilized sign to see women doing police work as well,” he said. “Besides, the women may be nicer than the men in dealing with people.”

— Maher Abukhater in Ramallah

ISRAEL: The 'big one' that wasn't

As if people in this conflict-ridden region don’t have enough to be jittery about — an earthquake scare?

Thousands of Palestinians were evacuated from schools and offices today after rumors of an impending earthquake caused panic in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. According to one version of the rumor, a small tremor hit the area shortly before noon (untrue) and a potentially devastating aftershock was expected (also untrue, so far).

The source of the rumor remained as much of a mystery as the missing temblor. But as with almost every story here, the episode carried a political element.

One version held that Palestinian authorities had spread word of an impending quake in order to deter protesters in the West Bank town of Hebron, where police have clashed twice this week with demonstrators opposed to the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis. There was counter-speculation that Palestinian Authority officials were being blamed for the scare as a way to discredit them and the nascent peacemaking efforts.

The Israeli news website Ynet was reporting that the rumor took off after Palestinian education officials ordered schools to make earthquake-preparedness plans. It said word soon spread that the expected quake would measure 7 or higher on the Richter scale.

The Geophysical Institute of Israel, which monitors seismological activity, said the rumor was unfounded, and that officials don’t try to predict quakes.

Earthquakes, even big ones, have been known to hit here. At least two minor quakes could be felt in parts of Israel and the West Bank in recent weeks, renewing speculation that the region was due for a much bigger one sometime soon.

Meantime, we’ll try to stay focused on what’s happening on the ground, not under it.

— Ken Ellingwood in Jerusalem and Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank

ISRAEL: At the Old City, breathing it in

Jerusalem’s Old City offers a feast of iconic sights (the Dome of the Rock and Western Wall, for example) and evocative sounds (the pealing church bells and chanting calls to Muslim prayer). But the cramped stone alleys are also rich for how they smell--for the variety of scents, from burning incense to ground cardamom, that tell you a lot about the Old City’s many roles as holy spot, tourist destination and ordinary residential neighborhood.

Just step inside Jaffa Gate, past the row of taxis, where a pushcart is loaded with oblong rings of a sesame-topped bread, known in Hebrew as beigale and Arabic as ka’ak, that smell fresh-baked. Follow the slippery stone walk as it slopes gently past souvenir shops tight on both sides, the fresh-leather scent of sandals for sale disappearing behind a vendor’s cigarette smoke.

Prisoners as icons, and museum fodder

Patriotic steadfastness is exalted in the Palestinian imagination, and no one personifies this more than a Palestinian prisoner — there are an estimated 11,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Prisoners are esteemed across Palestinian society, and a jail stint buys instant street cred.

A new West Bank museum focusing on prisoners gives a strong taste of the iconography around jailed Palestinians, if not deep scholarship or much explanation. The six-month-old Abu Jihad Center for Political Prisoners’ Affairs is a collection of artifacts — letters, photos of prison life and the like — and a comment on life under occupation. Mainly, it’s a salute to Palestinians jailed by Israel. (That’s 800,000 people since 1967, said museum director Fahed Abu Haj, an animated, stocky man who spent 10 years in jail for his activities in the Fatah movement.)

The museum was built with $750,000 from Kuwait and named after Khalil Wazir, a former deputy of Yasser Arafat killed in Tunisia in 1988, apparently by Israeli agents. Housed at Al Quds University in Abu Dis, the collection pays careful attention to symbolism and design (crenelated walls and worn stone tiles are meant to evoke Jerusalem’s Old City, for example).

There are many lists: of 27 Israeli detention facilities; of 76 “forms of torture" inside Israeli jails; of 220 Palestinians who died in custody. Another roster lists 64 “old prisoners” jailed more than 20 years. The most immediate artifacts are those from prisoners’ daily lives, such as the letters written in minuscule Arabic script and rolled into candy-sized pellets to be smuggled out by prison visitors.

Israelis are welcome, Abu Haj says, but even dovish Israelis may be appalled that the museum never says what deeds these inmates committed. A Palestinian’s act of resistance is usually an Israeli’s act of terrorism.

Still, samples of prisoner art, including Dome of the Rock sculptures crafted from cardboard, beads, colored silk and other household materials, help show that inmates are people, too, said Salah Takatka, who was visiting on a recent day. Takatka, 33, was freed in September after serving 8 1/2 years for activities that, he said, included attacking Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem with stones.

“When they see the work that we do, they will see we are not all terrorists,” Takatka said. “We are also artists.”

— Ken Ellingwood in Abu Dis

Photo: Fahed Abu Haj, a Palestinian former prisoner, runs a new museum in the West Bank devoted to the experience of Palestinians jailed by Israel. Credit: Ken Ellingwood

GAZA: Plenty of blame for both sides

Hamas and Fatah each have abused Palestinians’ rights since facing off in a mini civil war in the Gaza Strip this summer.

So says Amnesty International, which today accused the rival Palestinian factions of what it called “flagrant disregard for the human rights of the civilian population already worn down by decades of Israeli occupation, military campaigns and blockades.”

MIDDLE EAST: Where East doesn't meet West

The massive concrete barrier snaking through the West Bank may get most of the attention, but  an equally formidable wall exists in the minds of the residents of Jerusalem.

Last week, I attempted to set up an interview with representatives from the international aid organization Save The Children. The simple act of agreeing where to meet was a sobering lesson in the invisible barriers that have become a part of daily life here.

“I’m new in town,” I told their spokesman over the phone. “But just give me the address and I should be able to find your office.”

“Well, we’re in East Jerusalem and the streets here don’t really have names or signs,” he said.

“Umm ... OK. Well, is there a nearby landmark so I can tell the cabdriver?”

He almost laughed; the request was so naïve. “You’re coming from West Jerusalem, right? Most taxi drivers from the west won’t come to East Jerusalem.”

Friends tell me of leftist, peacenik Israeli friends -- strong supporters of Palestinian rights -- who nonetheless speak of Arab East Jerusalem as an impossibly exotic and dangerous place. It’s not prejudice, they say, as much as an unspoken taboo combined with (perhaps justified) fear of a hostile reception. 

One journalist here once tried to meet an Israeli source who absolutely refused to go to East Jerusalem. So he instead arranged to meet in the lobby of a five-star hotel, at which point he told the source: “By the way, you know you’re in East Jerusalem now, right?”

— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem